Artificial intelligence has been hampered to some extent because some human senses are difficult to synthesize. Computers do not see too well and robots have difficulty with a sense humans take for granted: touch. Even without sight, it is relatively simple for humans, through touch, to tell the difference between a rock, a desk, a pipe--even the difference between a metal and a plastic pipe. Computers and robots and other forms of artificial intelligence do not have this capability.
The need for an artificial intelligence system which can "feel" and classify and even identify objects is self evident: if robots can be made to select or avoid the proper object out of a group of objects, the tedious task of sorting different objects by hand could be automated, and objects could be remotely detected and classified as either harmless or dangerous before human contact is made.
Unfortunately, no artificial intelligence based system exists which automatically classifies or identifies objects on the basis of touch.